Get started

Ready? Head to the signup page and choose a plan. You’ll get to use Pulley free for two weeks with no restrictions so you can test the waters without spending a dime. No commitments, no credit card required. If you dig it, you can activate your account at the end of the trial.

Once your account is created, log in using your Pulley URL (it’ll look like: http://example.pulleyapp.com) and get started adding products and adjusting your settings.

Add products

Link Big Cartel to Pulley

Selling from a Big Cartel store and want to offer digital goods too? Pulley to the rescue! Head to Settings > Checkout in your Pulley admin to add your Big Cartel URL and link it up.

Then head to the Products section and use the Add Product > Import from Big Cartel button to link a Pulley file to a product listing or product option. That’s it!

Selling with PayPal

If you’d like to sell with PayPal, instead of selling with Big Cartel, you can head over to the Settings > Checkout section of your Pulley account to supply your PayPal email address for accepting funds, add a Success and Cancel URL that customers will see when completing or canceling an order, and optionally require an address at checkout so you can apply any PayPal tax and shipping rates.

Start selling

Once you’ve setup either Big Cartel or PayPal in your account, click the Sell button for your product and copy one of the buy now button options. There are a couple of styled HTML button options if you’re embedding in a blog or website, and a direct link option if you’re sharing in a social media post or email.

Dashboard

Here’s where you can view your latest orders, most popular products, and some sweet lookin’ graphs of your sales that you can sort by day, week or month.

Orders

In this section you can browse, search, and sort orders by their status. Clicking an order will show you the customer details, the unique download link they received, and an up-to-the-minute history of the order from the time it was placed to when the download link was clicked.

There’s also a button to resend 3 more download attempts to a customer in case they have trouble on the first few tries.

Order emails

In the Settings > Order Emails section of your Pulley account you can customize the emails your customers will receive when they order.

The Order email is sent to your customer when their order is paid for and ready to be downloaded. It’ll include a unique link to download the product that expires after 3 attempts.

The Pending email is sent to your customer when their order is received but their payment is still pending in PayPal.

We offer the option to customize the automatic emails so you can make them as unique and personalized as you’d like. Learn more about the syntax used in the emails below.

Variables

Use special variables inside your emails to automatically populate data into the subject or body of your order email.

{{ company.name }}

The company name listed on your Settings > General page.

{{ company.email }}

The email address listed on your Settings > General page.

{{ order.number }}

The unique ID for this order.

{{ order.buyer_name }}

Your customer’s first and last name.

{{ order.buyer_email }}

Your customer’s email address.

{{ order.amount }}

The total amount paid for this order.

{{ order.item_count }}

The number of items in this order.

{{ order.items }}

An array (list) of all items in this order.

{{ item.name }}

The name of the product.

{{ item.price }}

The price of the product.

{{ item.url }}

The private download url of the product.

Syntax

Now that you know the variables, use them in any number of creative ways.

Settings

On the Settings > General page you can set your company name, contact email address, country, currency (which sets the default PayPal checkout language), and time zone for your account.

Billing and account

Clicking the Account link in the top right corner of your Pulley admin will take you to your plan page, where you can upgrade, downgrade, or close your account. You can also update your Billing Information and check your Payment History for your records.

FAQs

What kind of files can I sell?

Virtually any downloadable file, regardless of type, that you have the legal right to sell can be sold through Pulley. It’s perfect for selling things like:

digital music

e-books

videos

photography

software

craft patterns

graphics and icons

fonts

event tickets

Where are my files stored? Is it secure?

All files are hosted privately on Amazon’s S3 service, which uses proven cryptographic methods to authenticate users, and all files are always transferred securely over SSL.

In regular speak, this means someone can’t intercept or download your files without us explicitly providing them with a secure download link. For more info on Amazon’s security measures, check out the AWS Security Center.

Plus, when someone buys one of your Pulley products, they’ll be emailed a secure download link that allows them 3 download attempts for each product they’ve purchased.

This provides them with a couple extra download attempts in case there’s a problem with their internet connection, while also limiting their ability to illegally give out the download link to others. After the link has been accessed 3 times, it expires.

Are there any bandwidth or selling limits?

Each plan has its own maximum file storage amount, ranging in size from 100 MB to 300 GB. You can view the plan options at our signup page. Click the High volume plans button if you’ll need a lot of space. Individual files can be 5GB maximum.

Which payment options can I accept?

Pulley is set up to use PayPal checkout, so the buy now links for your products will take customers directly to PayPal’s checkout screen to order.

Can I bundle a physical item with a Pulley download?

Sure thing - as long as you’re using Pulley with a Big Cartel store. Let’s say you’ve got your metal band’s CDs to sell along with a downloadable copy of the album. Just add your listing to the Big Cartel admin - for example, Our Metal Album (CD + MP3 download), then import that into Pulley in Products > Add Product > Import from Big Cartel to add the downloadable version of the album to the listing.

Can I host my own files?

No, sorry. Pulley files will need to be uploaded through the admin and hosted on our platform.

Can I offer free downloads with Pulley?

We’ve built Pulley specifically for digital download sales and delivery, so we don’t have any free file hosting features. If you’d like to offer free downloadables, we’d recommend hosting your file with a service like Dropbox and sharing the link with your fans and followers.

You can customize your Pulley order emails to include your free file links, too, as a nice bonus for paying customers.

Can I sell multiple files in one download?

You bet! To do that, you’ll need to bundle your files in a .zip file and upload that. If you’re not sure how, no worries - it’s easy. Just add your files into a folder on your computer, right-click on the folder, and click Compress (Mac) or Send to > Compressed (zipped) folder (Windows). Voila!

Can I send my customers an updated file?

Sure! You’ll just want to make sure you upload the new version of the file to the existing Pulley product listing and use the Resend option for each order you’d like to update, instead of deleting the product listing and creating a new one.

Make sure to edit the existing listing and add in the new file. Deleting the product listing altogether would destroy all the download links from the original orders, and you wouldn’t have the Resend option, so you’d have to manually email your customers the new file.

What do the order statuses mean?

In the Orders section you can keep tabs on each order as it comes in, and check to see if your customer has downloaded their file. Here’s a rundown of each status:

Delivered: the order has been emailed to the buyer, but they haven’t downloaded their products.

Pending: the order was placed, but payment has not yet completed through PayPal.

Completed: success! All products in the order have been downloaded by the buyer.

Failed: payment for the order was invalid. Your customer will need to try placing the order again.

My customers aren’t getting their download emails.

The usual suspect when it comes to missing download emails is the recipient’s spam/junk folder, since some email providers are quick to mark automated emails as spammy. If your customer hasn’t found the email there, and their order is showing as Delivered in your Pulley admin, you might try the Resend button once more for good measure.

And as a last resort, you’ll want to request an alternate email address from your customer to resend the order to, which you’ll enter when going through the usual Resend process.

My customer used up all their download attempts. Help!

There are a handful of reasons why the download process might mess up: poor internet connection, closing out of the browser in the middle of the download, strict firewall settings, or some other gremlin in the machine causing trouble. The good news is it’s easy to send a few more download attempts to any customer having trouble.

Simply hit the Resend button in the customer’s order, make any changes you’d like to the recipient email address or message, and send away.

I get an error when uploading a large file.

Sorry about that! You may want to try another browser to see if that helps. Some browsers don’t handle large file uploads/downloads too well, especially if there’s a blip with the internet connection or browser session.

If that still doesn’t work, try clearing your browser cache/cookies and double checking to make sure you’re not behind an HTTP proxy or firewall that might prevent the upload.

If you’re still having trouble feel free to contact us with details and we’ll investigate.

Orders aren’t showing up in my Pulley dashboard.

Uh oh! Usually that’s due to your IPN settings in PayPal being turned off. You can check to see if the orders were captured in the My Account > History > IPN History section of your PayPal account.

If IPN has been disabled, you’ll want to re-enable it and use your .pulleyapp.com URL (like: http://example.pulleyapp.com) for your IPN notification URL.

You should see the option to manually resend any recent failed IPN so that it’ll appear in your Pulley admin. Orders older than a couple days may need to be emailed manually to customers.

Will my download links work on mobile devices?

Sorry, Pulley downloads can only be completed through a desktop browser so your download links won’t work on phones or tablets. After the file has been downloaded in a browser, it can be transferred to another device.